


End of Games

by OfWilsonDreams



Category: The Marlows - Antonia Forest
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-14 23:06:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16050431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfWilsonDreams/pseuds/OfWilsonDreams
Summary: Nicola Marlow and Tom Craven sit in a pub and discuss football, history, and careers. Takes place in 1964.





	End of Games

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [antonia_forest_fanworks_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/antonia_forest_fanworks_2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> In Cricket Term, Miss Craven, prompted by Jan, says that one day when Nicola is old enough to hold a sensible conversation, she will have to ask her about the netball team disappointment from EOT. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at that conversation. I'd be quite interested to see the story told from Miss Craven's perspective, but would be equally happy to have it from any angle.

About the beginning of the school year, there would be a stretch of weeks where Miss Keith summoned her staff to dinner with her, one-on-one, for a friendly, informal chat about her expectations of the year to come. Junior staff frequently had to be given a stiff coffee and a sit-down in the staff common-room afterwards.

Miss Craven went to dinner with Miss Keith expecting nothing more than unexciting food (but different, at least, from that at the staff table in the dining-hall) and unexciting platitudes about the need for team spirit and cooperation and supporting underdogs. 

She didn't go to the common-room afterwards: she tapped on Miss Cromwell's door. 

"Ah," said Miss Cromwell, opening the door to her. "Come in. Did our revered Head suggest you retire this year, or next?" She produced, without being asked, the hidden bottle of malt whisky: drinking was naturally banned on school premises, apart from Miss Keith's sweet sherry for formal occasions, but all of the senior staff had occasionally resorted to Miss Cromwell's room and the whisky concealed behind Euclid's Elements.

Miss Cromwell poured a Scottish-size measure of whisky into the tumbler, and handed it to Miss Craven. 

"End of this school year," Miss Craven said. "She pointed out that Miss Redmond would be a capable and experienced successor."

"And she'll get about two-thirds of your pay," Miss Cromwell said. "You might well be able to argue her into another two or three years - you're not sixty yet, are you?"

"Yes," Miss Craven said. 

"You _are_?" Miss Cromwell was genuinely startled. 

"And Miss Keith knows it. I turned sixty in July."

"You don't look it." Miss Cromwell's lips pursed in a thin line. "When Miss Keith suggested three years ago that I retire at the end of term after my sixtieth birthday, I temporised. Kingscote is, you realise, a public limited company required to make an annual audit, and these records are available to anyone. I realised that Miss Keith's desire to rid herself of all of us antiques - " she gave Miss Craven a thin smile " - wasn't merely to be able to further impose her personality on the school, but in order to cut the wages bill significantly. I was able to negotiate an arrangement whereby my pay was frozen, but my pension contributions increased, and I shan't retire til I'm sixty-five. I would suggest something similiar to you, but - Tom, do you really _want_ to spend the next five years in muddy playing fields?"

By thirty, the women in Miss Craven's family had always settled into a weatherbeaten agelessness that they generally kept into their late sixties or seventies: and compared to them, Tom Craven lived soft. No gruelling factory shifts or dock work for her: she'd got out. Her mother hadn't stopped work at sixty, and the life of a games mistress at a girl's school wasn't nearly as hard. She drank her whisky, and looked bleakly at Miss Cromwell, whom she had always liked. 

"I like what I do," she said. "But as Miss Keith mentioned, the insurance costs go up for the school after I turned sixty."

"Difficult for you to fight it, then," Miss Cromwell said. Her lips pursed in a thin line. "But if only to annoy Miss Keith, I would certainly try."

A few weeks later, setting out for the third match of the autumn term, Miss Craven firmly put her feelings down to this being the first time this term Kingscote teams were played at a mixed school, and inevitably, she would have to spend time talking to their headmaster or their head of Games, who was always a man.

Usually there would also be a woman - assistant head of games, deputy headmistress - but quite often, Kingscote being what it was, the head of Games used to feel he ought to give Miss Craven the benefit of his attention when her girls played his, and during the half-time tea the games mistress at Kingscote would of course be a guest at the headmaster's table.

And oh God, how dreadfully, drearily dull it was to sit there and be patronised. Headmasters of mixed schools had Views on how single-sex education was bad for girls, which they were always happy to share with Miss Craven, even if her team had beaten his team into the ground.

On a wet afternoon in October the Hilary Grant school looked more than usually dreary: it was Miss Craven's turn to drive her car, instead of travelling in the bus with both the teams, and she pulled into the parking space beside the Kingscote bus with no sense of anticipation at all.

Instead of an organised group trooping out of the bus on their way over to the netball pitches, Miss Craven was greeted with an anxious cheeping from her newest assistant, a fresh young graduate - "It's one of the Marlow girls - she's hurt herself - "

Miss Craven rather hoped it was Lawrence who was hurt: she didn't wish the child any ill, but Lucy would be a perfectly effective substitute for Lawrence, whereas Nicola was a fearsomely effective Captain.

The Marlow twins were as identical as you like when they were upright and on the move, but when either was injured, they were instantly identifiable. Lawrence always managed to look pathos personified and full of audible misery and worry: Nicola inevitably retreated into a kind of silent, deliberately stoical fortress that was almost as annoying.

And it was Nicola, silent and stoical, who was sitting on the ground by the bus with one leg stretched out in front of her, wincing as one of the other girls, Miranda, probed her ankle. She had fallen getting off the bus, Miss Craven elicited from bystanders: there had been a pothole in the exact wrong place - and she had landed badly. Various first-aid experts were offering their views that the ankle was broken, that the ankle was only sprained, that the ankle was fine - while Nicola, who the ankle actually belonged to, was sitting on the gritty tarmac, saying nothing at all. 

"Do try to get up, Nicola," Miss Redmond was saying, officiously. "You can't just sit there."

"She tried to," Miranda said, standing up, sounding fierce. "She can't put any weight on that foot. I think it's broken."

Accepting the inevitable, Miss Craven handed over responsibility for the teams to Miss Redmond, with some brief final instructions, got local directions to the hospital with the X-ray clinic from the least-flapping member of Hilary Grant's staff, and helped Nicola to her feet. 

"I can walk," said Nicola, stoically.

"Lean on me and don't put _any_ weight on that foot," Miss Craven said, with sharp command. 

A very young doctor had wearily prodded Nicola Marlow's injured ankle, said she needed to have an X-ray before he could be sure it wasn't broken, and waved them both towards a row of waiting wheelchairs with mumbled directions - fortunately, the X-ray department was clearly signposted.

There had been six Marlow sisters at Kingscote since the oldest girl arrived in the First Form twelve years ago: like a sort of blonde tidal wave they had rushed up the school, all of them good at games, good at classwork, all of them gifted more or less with that indefinable talent of keeping their peers fond and admiring, two of them Head Girls, all of them indescribably arrogant in a way no teacher had ever been able to squelch. Miss Craven understood their father to be a navy captain and their mother landed gentry: they all took riding lessons and one of the Marlow sisters had kept a hawk at school for a term, a ridiculous notion which only their absurd headmistress would have allowed.

Miss Craven had never much liked any of them, but Nicola Marlow was ordinarily not much of an irritant: she was a competent Games Captain and a more than competent coach. Assuming that she needed to work at all, she could certainly find a job as a games teacher.

Nicola Marlow with a sprained-possibly-broken-ankle was such an obvious stoic, so very determined not to show it hurt that the doctor actually had to tell her to let him know when she felt pain: so "I can walk" that Miss Craven had had to order her into a wheelchair -

They were at the X-ray department, and Miss Craven whisked the doctor's notes out of Nicola Marlow's grip and handed them to the duty nurse. When the X-ray technician mistook her for the patient's mother, she managed to correct him with not much of a snap. Yes, they both had fair hair: no, they didn't otherwise look anything alike.

Back at the Hilary Grant school, the games would be going on with a hastily rearranged senior netball team and with Miss Redmond coaching instead of her. They took turns driving to the away matches, in case an adult with a car was needed, and Miss Craven wished heartily that it had been Miss Redmond's turn to drive, not hers.

Nicola Marlow looked strangely cheered when she was wheeled out of the X-ray room: the attendant was chatting away to her about the X-ray equipment, which apparently the girl had taken an interest in. She was looking stoical again when they got to see the doctor, who examined the X-ray films with a professional air and declared Nicola's ankle not broken, only badly sprained: instead of being relieved, Nicola started to argue with the doctor about how long it would take for a bad sprain to heal well enough to play netball again.

"Don't be absurd, Nicola," Miss Craven said. "You're out of the netball team for the rest of term. There is no point at all in putting your ankle under unnecessary strain."

"Quite right," said the doctor, giving them both a professional gleaming smile. "Nicola, you should listen to what your mother tells you. Stay off that ankle. Can you swim? Then swim all you like, but no running. What do games matter?"

"I'm not her mother, she's one of my students," Miss Craven said.

"Oh...?"

"Yes, I'm the games teacher. If you give Nicola your notes she will give them to Matron when we get back to school."

Tea at Kingscote would be over by the time they got back. "We'll stop somewhere on the way back to school and get something to eat," Miss Craven informed Nicola. 

Miss Craven drove and watched the signs by the road. Surely there must be somewhere in this stretch of countryside that wasn't a pretty cafe, closed for the day at four, or a restaurant attached to a hotel, either not open yet or not the kind of place Miss Keith would pay for a stranded teacher and injured schoolgirl to have their evening meal. By the time they got to Kingscote it would be too late for tea.

When she saw a pub up ahead - The White Dolphin - she slowed down. It was open, there was a sign outside that mentioned lunches, and all of the Marlow girls had winter birthdays, which meant Nicola must be 18 already or only a month or so off it. Also, it was just before five, so the pub would - with any luck - be empty. And there was a large gravelled area right beside the pub, which was marked "Deliveries" in big rather faded letters, but was empty.

"We'll stop here and have sandwiches and tea, if they'll give us some," Miss Craven told Nicola briskly.

Mute and stoical, Nicola got carefully out of the car and limped across the gravel to the pub's door: pausing to glance up at the pub sign, a large graceful white dolphin, with - for some reason - a sparkly gold crown on its head. Miss Craven caught up with her and pushed the door open: the man polishing glasses behind the bar looked up and looked them over with the assessing glance of a good publican. Tom Craven saw with relief that he was the kind of man she generally got on with.

After a couple of opening gambits about the weather and the football - Liverpool and Sheffield United, in his opinion Liverpool didn't stand a chance - they established that the pub's kitchen did sandwiches, and they could have beef, cheese, or ham: and while the pub didn't ordinarily serve tea, he daresay'd that there wouldn't be any harm in providing them with that, if they didn't mind it in mugs and kitchen tea: milk and sugar? Milk for me, milk and sugar for the young lady, Miss Craven said.

Nicola had sat down in one of the green-covered padded benches and was leaning her elbows on the table in front of her, looking, past the stoicism which Miss Craven expected, absolutely exhausted.

"I can open up the parlour," the man said, "but your young lady looks comfortable enough there, and there'll be no one in til after six: kick-off's at seven-thirty, and it really starts filling up in here from an hour before."

"We'll be gone before six," Miss Craven agreed, and went over to sit down on one of the chairs across from Nicola. She found that young Marlow's pose of heroic, silent stoicism when injured, ordinarily very irritating - even her twin's wailing tears was less so, being at least the kind of thing one could hand off to an assistant or Matron - but over the long afternoon of queuing, pushing Nicola in a wheelchair from one hospital appointment to the next, and three successive doctors prodding her ankle as they concluded that while painfully sprained, it wasn't actually broken - had convinced her this wasn't a pose: Nicola Marlow naturally did react to pain, even severe pain, with stoic silence.

"Put your bad foot up on that chair. You heard the doctor, keep it elevated. We'll have sandwiches and tea here, then we'll head on to Kingscote."

The sandwiches arrived - a large plateful, cut thick - and two mugs of strong tea.

Nicola looked up at the publican, and said abruptly, "Please, about the pub's name - "

"What's that?" The publican stopped and looked at her more closely.

"The 'White Dolphin'," Nicola said. "I heard - I read somewhere - that pubs called the Dolphin are all really named after victories over the French, dolphin for dauphin, you know? Was this pub?"

"So my grandfather said," the publican said, surprisingly. "But I never knew how seriously to take the gaffer. He claimed this pub was named about the time we were fighting Napoleon. It's been the White Dolphin since before the gaffer's time, anyway. Funny name for a pub so far from the sea, isn't it? You hurt your foot, did you?"

"Twisted my ankle," Nicola said. "They X-rayed it at the hospital and said it wasn't broken, just sprained."

"Then you keep it up on that chair, best thing for a sprain: rest and elevation. I can get a bag of ice from the kitchen, if you need it."

After he had left them, Nicola said, not very hopefully: "If I rest my ankle for the next couple of weeks, do you think it would be all right for netball then?"

"No," Miss Craven said, very abruptly. "You're staying on for the Upper Sixth, aren't you? Then you can start your preparation for Oxford early. I'll let Miss Ferguson know. Eat your sandwiches."

Nicola took one and bit into it, not very enthusiastically. 

"You'll still be Games Captain, of course," Miss Craven added, in case Nicola had doubted it. "It's not worth playing netball for a last term, no matter how well you play, if you wreck your ankle for life because you didn't rest up. You're good at coaching and supervision. What do you plan to do when you leave Oxford?"

There was a pause. "Dunno," Nicola said.

Get married, Miss Craven supposed: from the Old Girls' notices in the school paper, three out of four of Nicola's older sisters had married already.

"There's something I've meant to ask you for a little while now," Miss Craven said. Three or four years, ever since Nicola had shown her first promise as a cricketer and coach and her form had won the school cricket cup. "Do you happen to recall the winter term a few years ago, when you were in Lower Fourth?"

For some years now, the idea that Nicola Marlow would voluntarily be late to a games practice had struck Miss Craven as completely out of character: if she'd expected to be the junior netball captain (and just on her playing, even back then, she might well have done), young Nicola was much more likely to have shown up fifteen minutes early, full of herself, complete with coaching and training plans, and all but expecting to run the practice sessions herself.

"Yes," Nicola said. She wiped her fingers on the paper napkin provided, and folded it tidily.

"You may not have realised this, but it was because I'd had reports both from Miss Redmond and from the Games Captain that year, that you were acting rather above yourself - acting as if you felt entitled to be captain of the netball team, turning up late to practices, being impudent and showing off. Lateness to practices is a thing I won't tolerate, so combined with the other advice, you weren't on the netball team at all that year."

Nicola nodded. She looked expressionless and unfriendly.

"The more I saw of your work, after that one term, the less likely it all seemed - quite out of character, in fact. I wondered if we'd made a mistake. I'd meant to ask you for an explanation."

"No," Nicola said. Her voice, ordinarily a clear light tenor, was cracked like a boy's. "No, I wasn't late to practices." Nicola put her hands in her lap, and her face was frozen like glass. "You made a mistake."

Ever since Nicola Marlow became the school's games captain, Miss Craven had realised - with annoyance: this was not the kind of thing she liked to be aware of - that Miss Redmond, her colleague and senior assistant and according to Miss Keith her replacement, didn't like Nicola at all.

"It was Sprog, you see," said Nicola, and then abruptly her face froze, her eyes looked as if they were shining, and her hands moved together on the table in an awkward scrunch as if she were trying to hold back something too great to bear.

Miss Craven had no intention of making Nicola Marlow cry by a simple question: she would never have begun this conversation if she'd supposed tears were even possible.

Miss Redmond's dislike was not the normal Marlow-inspired irritation that probably every teacher at Kingscote had felt at some time or other: no, quite evidently Miss Redmond felt a personal dislike for young Nicola, quite as rooted as if Nicola were an adult. Not that they could even have had much to do with each other outside games and domestic science: Nicola had had the normal flirtation with Guides in her first term, and then abandoned it to do other things.

More irritatingly, it was impossible to tell by Nicola's speech or bearing if she even realised that Miss Redmond disliked her. 

Sprog?

Miss Craven got up hastily and went to the bar and ordered a brandy. The barman looked at her and over at Nicola and said, "For you or the young lady?"

"She's my student," Tom Craven said.

"That may be, but she's not eighteen yet."

"I've just - had to give her some rather bad news," Tom said. 

"Right," said the barman. "Well," he looked her over again, and looked Nicola over. "Let's say I give you the brandy, as a present, and then I'm not breaking the law, am I?"

"Right," Tom said, relieved. (She fully expected her bill for tea and sandwiches would be inflated by the price of a tot of brandy, and she was correct.)

"Drink this," Tom instructed Nicola.

Nicola picked up the glass, swigged down the brandy like an expert, and blinked, eyes widening.

"Something tells me that is not your first drink," Tom muttered.

"Last time it was rum," Nicola said.

"Navy traditions," Tom said. "Brandy is good for shock. So is tea. Drink your tea. Tell me - who is Sprog?"

"My hawk," Nicola said.

Of course: Nicola had been the Marlow sister who had brought her hawk to school one term. Miss Keith had thought it rather splendid, of course. Somehow she'd associated that with Virginia: it was the kind of spectacular silliness she had expected from that young lady.

"Sprog died, you see," Nicola said. She evidently thought she was explaining. "The Christmas after that term. But I had him at school with me that term. And I was showing him to Miss Ferguson, and we forgot the time - and I was late."

"Didn't you explain to Miss Redmond?"

"She wasn't there," Nicola said. "Lois took that practice. I did explain."

Lois Sanger had been the Games Captain that year.

"But if it was only once, and you had a reason, why on earth would the girl have told me you were frequently late?"

"Well," Nicola said. She looked at Tom Craven, slightly owlish. "Well, Lawrie and me always said we wouldn't tell."

"About you and her swapping places in a netball match?" Miss Craven said tartly. "Too late."

"Oh no," Nicola said. "Look - if I tell you, do you swear it doesn't go any further?"

"What?" Tom Craven was genuinely taken aback, and then realised, and laughed, abruptly, strangely tickled. She nearly said, out loud "Nicola, we're in a pub, where Miss Keith would say we ought not to be, and I've just given you a brandy, which is strictly forbidden except by Matron. I think I can reliably say that unless you tell me something about burglary or battery, I won't be spreading it around." 

Tom stopped herself from laughing, and said "Private joke. No, I won't take it further."

"Well," Nicola said again. "It was about Guides, you see."

She did explain, this time: how she and her sister had made a harmless enough mistake when they were under Lois's supervision, which Lois Sanger had lied about to cast blame from her to them, and they had been expelled from Guides and sworn they'd never go back (and the Redmond still hasn't forgiven me for telling her that, Nicola said with entirely unexpected candour).

"I think I could use a drink," Tom Craven said. She'd never much cared for Lois Sanger, but her dislike for the girl had been mainly sourced in Sanger's laziness when made School Captain: this kind of vicious pettiness, spoiling a good netball team just because she didn't like one girl, hadn't occurred to Tom. Whatever else had happened, she'd assumed Lois had been telling the truth about Nicola's lateness. "Forget I said that," she added. "I can't have a drink: I have to get you back to school in good order. Finish those sandwiches, for heaven's sake."

And there was now the problem of Miss Redmond to consider. 

Looking strangely relaxed, Nicola took another sandwich and bit into it. "Miss Craven," she asked, "ought you to know I'm not eighteen til summer? Rowan's birthday's in November, I thought you might have mixed us up."

"I did," Tom admitted, and took another sandwich. "Are you planning to go on to Oxford, or to London, when you pass your A-Levels?"

She hoped the answer wasn't going to be that Nicola was going home to live (and presumably get married at 19 to some wealthy neighbour's son, like a good county girl).

"Miss Ferguson thinks I should read history," Nicola said.

"What do you plan to do?"

Nicola looked at her. Her voice was unexpectedly fragile, as if she hadn't said this aloud very often. "Sail round the world, single-handed," she said.

"You want to do the OSTAR?" Miss Craven was startled. The second round-the-world single-handed yachting race had been in the news that summer: the first time, four years ago, Nicola would have been thirteen or so, an impressionable age: and now it wasn't a stunt but perhaps becoming a regular event, sooner or later there would be women sailing in the race.

"N-no," Nicola said. "In our library, at home, I read a book - "

The book was _Sailing Alone Around The World_ by a sea-captain, Joshua Slocum. Nicola Marlow had read it aged twelve, and apparently had been fired up by the desire to do what Slocum did: a desire not in any way disturbed by the fact, she admitted, that Captain Slocum had been lost at sea nine years after publishing his book.

It didn't seem worthwhile asking if this county family, whose daughters generally got married rather than had careers, would take seriously their daughter's ambition to sail round the world.

Instead, "When I was younger than you, I ran away from home," Miss Craven admitted. 

Nicola stared at her.

"I was working in a munitions factory during the war - the first war," Miss Craven clarified. "Not for long, just for the last few months after I left school. I got my Schools Certificate when I was sixteen, and my mother wanted me to go to college, but all my friends were doing war work in the factory, and she didn't mind me doing that for a while. The factory women had a football team, and I was good. So when they formed a league and started playing matches - and we were getting enough money in gate receipts to pay all of our expenses - I went with the team. We played together til 1921. My mother said she'd kill me if I went, but after all, I'm still here - and so's my mother: she's eighty-four next year."

"What happened in 1921?"

"The Football Association banned all women's teams from using any of the FA grounds, and with that, we just couldn't play most of our matches any more. Have another sandwich."

Nicola looked surprised: she had eaten one while Miss Craven was talking, and evidently hadn't noticed. She took another one, and held it in her hand. "Why did the FA ban you?"

Miss Craven could quote the FA's resolution by heart: "Because 'the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged'. That's why at Kingscote we're only allowed to teach you ladylike games like netball, cricket, and tennis." 

"Gosh," Nicola Marlow said, and evidently quite aware of the inadequacy of this comment, stuffed half the sandwich into her mouth and chewed on it. Finally she swallowed, without choking, and said "My brothers don't play football either, and me and Lawrie used to play cricket with them."

Tom Craven paused to consider whether the youngest daughter of a family of landed gentry and navy officers would really understand why her brothers didn't play football, and decided that whether Nicola would or not, she didn't care enough to explain. "Football's supposed to be a rough game," she said. "Though it doesn't need to be." She'd heard Nicola describing rowdy behaviour at games as "load of ruddy footballers". She didn't suppose Nicola had even noticed.

"I liked playing football, I was good at it, and in the end, doing what I wanted didn't interfere with my earning a living, though my mother was afraid it would. But, if your parents will pay for you to go up to Oxford, read history, and get your degree, then do that," Miss Craven said - far different from the physical education college her mother had scrimped to send her to, though that had led to this. "You can get sailing practice in your vacations. And figure out what you want to sail round the world _in_."

"A junk-rigged sloop with wind-vane self-steering gear," Nicola said. Whatever that meant.

"Right," Miss Craven said. 

The other question she had meant to ask Nicola Marlow - are you aware Miss Redmond doesn't like you - was answered: and while Lois Sanger was gone, Miss Redmond would be Games mistress next year. Upper Sixth didn't take part in interschool matches, but they were supposed to play for healthy recreation. 

Miss Craven had been feeling too tired to argue with Miss Keith. She drank her tea, and ate a last sandwich, and contemplated one more fight: not to put off her retirement for five years, but for just one.

Or perhaps two: she felt she would quite like to have one last year at Kingscote with no Marlows at all. 

"You have the last sandwich," she instructed Nicola. "I'll take you over to the San for the night when we get back."

And then she'd visit Miss Cromwell's room, for a stiff drink, and to tell her: Let's screw two more years out of Miss Keith. 

By her reckoning, this meant she and Miss Cromwell would be retiring at essentially the same time. 

**Author's Note:**

> As we all know, Antonia Forest's unique approach to time makes dating the Marlow family saga difficult. As End of Term was published in 1959, I decided to assume that this story takes place in 1964, the year in which Nicola Marlow would have reached Lower Sixth had chronology proceeded as it normally does outside of the Marlowverse. (I realise this makes the dating of earlier books impossible - Nicola and Lawrie must have been born in 1947 - but I can't help that: I'm not Antonia Forest and I couldn't just handwave "this happened after the war".)


End file.
